Winklevoss twins drop Facebook settlement appeal

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have decided not to appeal against a ruling upholding the twin brothers' $65m settlement with Facebook, after a long-running dispute with the company's founder Mark Zuckerberg.

The brothers, whose fight with Zuckerberg was dramatised in the Hollywood movie The Social Network, lost an appeal in April this year against a 2008 settlement with Facebook, which granted them $20m in cash and $45m in the firm's shares.

Both men said they would appeal against that ruling at the US Supreme Court.

The Winklevoss twins, according to Reuters, did not reveal in a filing with a federal appeals court in San Francisco yesterday why they had decided to halt any Supreme Court review of the settlement.

The case first went to court in July 2007, when Facebook faced allegations that Zuckerberg stole software code and his business plan from fellow students at Harvard University.

ConnectU Inc, a rival social site operated by the Winklevoss men and Divya Narendra, claimed in the original suit that Zuckerberg agreed to complete code for them, but rather than doing so he delayed their project while initiating his own using their ideas.